AI Summary
5 min readIn December, story hunter Josh Davis answered a spam call from an Irishwoman selling a home equity line of credit. He tried his usual technique to break her out of her script—asking what she had for breakfast. She dodged the question. It took him ninety seconds to realize she hadn't eaten breakfast because she wasn't human. She was an AI. Davis was disappointed, but then he kept thinking about it. He ended up licensing that telemarketing software, stripping out its code, and retraining it to think like a story hunter—someone genuinely interested in human experience. He bought a phone number, posted it online, and people started calling. They told a machine about wild animal attacks and ghosts. And they opened up more than they usually do with humans, because the machine felt non-judgmental.
This conversation between Davis and host Linda Boff, former CMO of GE, uses that experiment as a lens to examine what happens when AI meets mass-market storytelling—using Coca-Cola's recent holiday campaigns as the test case.
The generational divide is probably temporal
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of A Different Take with Linda Boff
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Host Welcome** - Host Linda Boff introduces the episode's focus on AI, storytelling, and the Coca-Cola case study with guest Josh Davis, a self-described "story hunter."
- 2 (03:01) **Defining "Story Hunter"** - Josh explains his core identity and approach to finding and telling human stories.
- 3 (03:48) **Generational Divide in AI Reception** - Josh observes how different age groups perceive AI-generated content, particularly visuals.
- 4 (04:51) **The Temporal Nature of Backlash: The Polar Bear Precedent** - Josh argues that criticism of AI is often just a reaction to the latest technological wave, using Coca-Cola's history as proof.
- 5 (06:38) **Parsing the Coca-Cola AI Backlash: Creatives vs. General Public** - The conversation dissects who actually objected to the AI-generated holiday ads and why.
- 6 (08:39) **The "Knocker Upper" Analogy for Marketing Jobs** - Josh tells the historical story of the "knocker upper" to frame the current fear around AI replacing jobs.
- 7 (11:36) **The Positive View: AI as an Off-Ramp from Dehumanization** - Josh shares his personal experience with soul-crushing repetitive work to argue for AI's liberating potential.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Episode 3: Veteran storyhunter and filmmaker Josh Davis helps unpack a broader shift in marketing, where AI is making high-quality storytelling faster, more accessible, and increasingly scalable for brands of all sizes. Questions explored are whether society is moving from skepticism to acceptance of AI, how audiences define authenticity, and what marketers can learn as technology evolves faster than cultural norms and expectations.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from this podcast
A Different Take with Linda Boff →